? , v. 495 - Athens, 429 av. J. - C.
Athenian politician. In Periklês Greek. The Périclès Athenian gave his name to a “century” not as well by his brilliant talents of statesman, and especially politician, as thanks to the completely exceptional duration of his political preeminence in the Athenian democracy, then arrived to his apogee.
Between the end of the second medic war (479) and the beginning of the Peloponnesian War (431), during the few decades during which are definitively fixed the democratic laws, the figure of Périclès personifies the glory and the power of its city.
One attends the imposing embellishment of the Acropolis and of the Agora of Athens, traditional Greek art reaches its apogee and, especially, hegemony attic is essential in the Aegean Sea, so much so that the league of Délos, confederation formed to fight against Persians, takes the form of an Athenian empire. However, the historical destiny of Périclès is related to the errors which will involve Athens and, with it, all Greece in the disasters of a bloody and interminable war, the Peloponnesian War (431-404): Athens against Sparte.
A citizen except par
Périclès seems predestined as of its birth with a role of citizen except par. Member by his mother of the aristocratic big family of Alcméonides, which dominates the political life since it drove out the Hippias tyrant, he is the son of the strategist Xanthippos, the winner of the Persian fleet to the course Mycale, and of Agaristê, the niece of large Clisthène, founder of the Athenian democracy. The Périclès young person must with the richness of his family have for tutors of the philosophers as famous as Zénon d' Elée and Anaxagore. This last, in particular, will give to Périclès the screen of its political thought by professing that the spirit (us) must inspire a man, which in its turn must inspire a city, then whole Greece against the Barbarians (Persians).
Périclès will make its training of statesman at the sides of Ephialtès, chief of the democratic party, which attacks the last privileges of oligarchy by reducing the powers of the Learned assembly. After the assassination of Ephialtès by partisans of oligarchy (v. 461), Périclès got busy at once to supplement its work, by taking the direction of the democratic party opposed to Cimon. Instigator of reforms aiming at granting sovereignty the whole of the citizens, it instituted the graph paranomôn, kind of constitutional recourse, in the event of illegality, authorized with all the citizens, and especially the misthophorie, allowance paid with the citizens for their participation in the institutions: swell (the Council) or héliée (popular court). In 451, Périclès limited the citizenship to the only children of father and mother Athenians, to prevent that the wogs, increasingly many and attracted by the economic role of Athens, do not upset with long democracy rested by country small holders; it put an end to the opposition of the oligarchy - of which most famous representing, Thucydide, was struck of ostracism.
The manufacturer of the Athenian Empire
At this point in time Périclès started to be opposed vigorously to the policy of the Cimon strategist, who had led Athens to the forwardings risked in Cyprus and in Egypt, adventures whose disasters were repaired with large-sorrow. Cimon died during ultimate forwarding, peace was finally concluded with Persians, ensuring the hegemony of Athens at sea Egée (449), and Périclès could make triumph its foreign policy: Athens was going to impose its hegemony on whole Greece, thanks to the control of the sea, Périclès thus continuing the work of Thémistocle, the winner of Salamine and the manufacturer of the Long Walls (enclosure of Athens and its port). Périclès, clear-sighted, understood that this hegemony was to rest on prosperity and peace. Athens, exhausted by thirty years of war against Persians and weakened by its reverses in Minor Asia, put an end to the local wars caused by Sparte while treating directly with this one; it gave up Mégare and the Peloponnese, except for Egine and of Eubée which were yielded to him (446).
During the fourteen years which separate this enough the Great War against Sparte, considered to be inevitable by Périclès, this one will be the principal manufacturer of the Athenian Empire. Principal craftsman of the Athenian imperialism, Périclès starts by imposing his protectorate on the allies of the league of Délos, and brings back the confederal treasure to Athens, on the Acropolis (454) them guards and managers (hellénotames) being all of the Athenians; also Périclès, official person in charge of public works, can it use this capital to embellish the city; that causes the dissatisfaction with its allies and the revolt of Eubée (446) and of Samos (440), crushed by a forwarding that Périclès directs personally.
Byzance also rose; the revolt was dominated, and Byzance became the prone one of Athens. Controlling the straits, Périclès established colonies on the Black Sea (Sinope, Amisos) in Thrace, in Chalcidique; in Sicily, it contracted alliances against Syracuse.
Enjoying an immense prestige thanks to its successes, as well as possible using exceptional talents of speaker which made it call “the Olympian one”, facing criticisms which reproached him its cohabitation with Milésienne Aspasie, obtaining from the Parliament the possibility of infringing the laws that it itself had enacted (citizenship is granted to the son which Aspasie gives him), Périclès is then without question the “prostate” of the city, its leader not elected; unceasingly re-elected during fifteen years with the load of strategist, it is that whose opinion prevails.
Sparte against Athens
The power which it had known to give to Athens threatened of throttling its competitors on sea, Corinthe and Mégare, which ended up tearing off with the Spartans and the Philistines the declaration of war after the intervention of Athens in the conflict of Corcyre: Athens and Corcyre were allied, one dominating the Aegean Sea, the other the sea Ionienne. Périclès, having pushed back the ultimate embassies Spartans, was not surprised to see Péloponnésiens invading the Attic, into 431. Refusing the terrestrial combat with the Spartans, invincible on ground, he wanted to overcome by the sea. He thus put the population of the Attic safe from Long Walls. This decision had catastrophic consequences. The Attic was devastated; the small farmers assisted, from the top of ramparts, with the fire of their goods; a pillar of the democracy crumbled. The refusal to fight made Périclès so unpopular that it was put in charge: it was to give an account of the use of the “secret funds” of war. Recalled in its functions the same year, he died shortly after in the epidemic of plague which devastated Athens locked up in its walls.
With the death of Périclès the time of splendor finished, time when Athens was, according to the proud expression that Thucydide lends to Périclès, “the school of all Greece”.
“The century of Périclès”
“We like a simple beauty”: these words that Thucydide ready in Périclès summarize perfectly the ideal of the great man of Athenian State in the field of arts. This ideal found an immediate application in the need for perfecting the rebuilding of Athens (left in ruin at the beginning of Persians in 479 av. J. - C.), undertaken by Thémistocle and Cimon, which had avoided urgently by surrounding the town of a strengthened enclosure.
Hardly the peace of 449 it was concluded with Persia that Périclès makes build on the platform of Pyrgos, west of the Acropolis, the temple of Athéna Nike (“Victorious”). It made sure then of the collaboration of the large Phidias sculptor, of the architects Callicratès and Ictinos to conclude the most ambitious part of its program: the installation of the Acropolis. Made more accessible by a new road comprising a junction which led to the rocky outcrop of Pyrgos, the citadel of old Athens, losing its character of fortress, was equipped with new monuments: Parthenon, new Propylées (conceived and realized by Mnésiclès from 437 to 432), new Erechthéion (421-406), with its famous platform of the Caryatids.
On the southernmost side of the Acropolis, Périclès made undertake, into 445, the construction of Odéon, one of the most beautiful concert halls of the Greek world, completed towards 443. At the place where this building, destroyed by a fire in 86 av. J was built. - C., one found ruins belonging to a construction which, most probably, respects the original plan. Located like Odéon apart from the architectural complex of the Acropolis, the temples of Héphaïstos (449-444) and Ares (440-436), in the North-West of the Agora, them were also set up on the initiative of Périclès, which added soon to its achievements of prestige of great work of public utility: the construction of the Long Walls and the construction of the new city of Pirée. The Long Walls had as a function, by joining together Athens in Pirée, to make of the unit formed by the city and its port a kind of artificial small island impregnable. Mégare and Callicratès were the architects of this imposing defensive system started towards 461 and completed into 443-442.
Out of Athens, in Eleusis, Périclès decides the rebuilding of Telestérion, or temple of the Mysteries, entrusted to Ictinos, Coroïbos and Xénoclès. With the course Sounion, it made set up the temples of Poséidon (444-440) and Athéna. In Rhamnonte, another small town of the Attic, one began the building work of the temple of Némésis (436-432), building which was never completed: the Peloponnesian War stopped work, like for Propylées and Erechthéion.
Rather curiously, Périclès, which largely had recourse to Phidias and its more brilliant pupils, Alcamène and Agoracrite, as well as in Crésilas (active towards 440-430), presumed author of the bust by which we know the features of the statesman, did not never call upon Myron (active towards 450-435), the sculptor of Discobole, considered to be perhaps too realistic, too far from the “simple beauty”.
Works of the Hérodote historian, to the philosophers Anaxagore, Protagoras and Socrate, to the tragic poets Sophocle and Euripide testify, among others, that the “century of Périclès” was the most brilliant time of the Athenian and Greek history.